Weekly Web Harvest for 2016-08-14

To cut down on calls to police, Walmart has been rolling out a program where first-time offenders caught stealing merchandise below a certain value can avoid arrest if they agree to go through a theft-prevention program. At some higher-crime stores, the company is also hiring off-duty police and private security officers. According to Walmart Stores executives, it’s all starting to work.

Police chiefs and their officers on the ground say that’s just not so. Ross likes to joke that the concentration of crime at Walmart makes his job easier. “I’ve got all my bad guys in one place,” he says, flashing a bright smile. His squad’s sergeant, Robert Rohloff, a 34-year police veteran who has to worry about staffing, budgets, and patrolling the busiest commercial district in Tulsa, says there’s nothing funny about Walmart’s impact on public safety. He can’t believe, he says, that a multibillion-dollar corporation isn’t doing more to stop crime. Instead, he says, it offloads the job to the police at taxpayers’ expense. “It’s ridiculous—we are talking about the biggest retailer in the world,” says Rohloff. “I may have half my squad there for hours.”

Related posts

Vampire squid – WikipediaVampyroteuthis infernalis In the Eyes of the Animalanother experiential animal eye Animal Vision Simulatorsee the world through the eyes of various animals – android phone app Light Work: The Rise of NBA Skills Trainers – The RingerBazzell is a part of a new generation of skills trainers who have utilized social media to their advantage and in the process turned the profession mainstream. Today you would be hard-pressed to find an NBA player who doesn’t have “their guy,” whether they’re team-affiliated or from the private sector. Players work out with their trainers in the offseason, do film work with them, and keep in contact—sometimes in person—throughout the season. Some have even been hired on their trainees’ teams. In recent years, these trainers have become more than just another face in an NBA player’s entourage. They are highlight-reel curators, entrepreneurs, and newsmakers. To the chagrin of some of their peers, some are even social media celebrities.

It only took Oz govt transformation bods 6 months and $700k to report that blockchain ain’t worth the effort • The RegisterHe also reiterated the relentless nature of the vendor push. “A lot of the big vendors are pushing blockchain very hard, and internationally most of the hype around blockchain is coming from vendors and companies, not from governments and users and deliverers of services.” Power Causes Brain Damage – The AtlanticLess able to make out people’s individuating traits, they rely more heavily on stereotype. And the less they’re able to see, other research suggests, the more they rely on a personal “vision” for navigation. John Stumpf saw a Wells Fargo where every customer had eight separate accounts. (As he’d often noted to employees, eight rhymes with great.) “Cross-selling,” he told Congress, “is shorthand for deepening relationships.” Jay Eaton ? on Twitter: “90% of graffiti added to video game environments bothers the hell out of me and this is WHY… “

Gobo Sign up for Gobo, link it to your other social media profiles, and you can take control of your feed. Want to read news you aren’t otherwise seeing? Use our “Echo Chamber” filter to see what we call “wider” news. Want a better balance of men and women in your feed? Use our “gender” filter to rebalance it. Want to take a lunch break and just see popular funny videos you friends are sharing? Use our “virality” filter to pick only the most shared content. With Gogo you’re in charge of the algorithmic filters that control what you see on social media. We’ve built a bunch of filters like these already, are building more, and have made it possible for other developers to add filters too. Sign up, try it out, and see if it changes how you think about how social media should work. Lunar Conversations – C82: Works of Nicholas Rougeux Watch neural networks see only what they’ve been trained to see / Boing Boing confirmation bias meets potentials for art This School Has Been Arming Classrooms With 5-Gallon Buckets Of Rocks In The Event Of A School Shooting David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, made the announcement at a state House Education Committee hearing on school safety March 15. “If […]